Mountain View’s proposed ‘Google tax’ reminds us that big employers bring not just jobs, but problems

For years now, the debate about job growth in America has sounded one note: More is better, and hugely more is hugely better. But lately, a few communities have sounded discordant notes. The latest is Mountain View, the home of Google and several other big and rapidly growing tech companies. The city’s mayor, Lenny Siegel, is proposing to place what’s known as the “Google tax” on November’s city ballot. “I call it the perils of prosperity,” Siegel told me. “We’re blessed with too many good jobs for the housing and transportation we have.” As Mountain View’s biggest employer, Google brings about 20,000 employees into the city every working day. But it’s not the only contributor to an influx that swells the city’s population, nominally about 80,000, to about 125,000 in the daytime – Microsoft, LinkedIn and Intuit are also major employers. About 2,000 to 3,000 Google employees live in Mountain View, Siegel estimates. That has strained the housing and transportation infrastructure of this city in the heart of Silicon Valley to the breaking point. The rents on new apartments run about $5,000 a month. Three-bedroom single-family homes of 1,500 square feet list for nearly $2 million. The city has built a modest number of affordable housing units, but not nearly enough, and it suffers from what Siegel calls “the missing middle: teachers, plumbers, surgical technicians who make too much money to qualify for affordable housing, but not enough to live here.” Some 300 inhabited vehicles are parked on Mountain View’s… [Read full story]